


the map that leads to you

by fowlaaa



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Inspired by the script for 8x06, Jon and Sansa Are Not Related, Jon and Sansa look at each other. They both failed geography., Jon and the Starks Are Not Related, Modern AU, POV Sansa Stark, here have a summer geography class that throws these two idiots together, summer school AU, this line has to be good for something so
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-07-28 19:58:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20069728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fowlaaa/pseuds/fowlaaa
Summary: In which Sansa and Jon both fail geography, and wind up retaking it in the same summer school class. Inspired by the script from 8x06, The Iron Throne.





	1. week 1

**Author's Note:**

> Lemme just start by saying that I have nooooo idea what grade people typically take geography. For my purposes, I’m just going to say that Sansa took it as a tenth grader at her school (she’s a boarding student at King’s Landing Academy), and Jon took it as an eleventh grader back at Winterfell High School. 
> 
> Shoutout to Maroon 5 for the title lyric -- it’s a little on the nose, but hey, it works. 
> 
> Anyway, I know I should be working on my other WIPs, but this idea kind of took over and I’ve been wanting to finally write something Jonsa for a while, so… thanks, D&D, for writing such a laughably bad script. Never would have had this idea without you (or without 3urydice, who's been encouraging me to write Jonsa for a while and who also immediately was like SO WHERE'S THE SUMMER SCHOOL AU? when we saw the script.)
> 
> Last: according to the Wiki there are 3 known continents but I decided to toss in whatever Arya thinks she's discovering when she sails West, and a bonus fake Antarctica to make 5, because why not?

Sansa Stark has never been so embarrassed in her whole life.

She’s prided herself on being one of the top students in her class for  _ years _ now — it’s part of how she convinced her parents to send her away to the prestigious boarding school she attends, King’s Landing Academy, rather than dooming her to Winterfell High with all of her siblings. And she  _ is _ one of the best, in nearly every subject.

Just not in geography.

Sansa had imagined that the summer after her sophomore year would be filled with glorious trips with her best friend Margaery, snapping pictures of themselves all over Westeros and posting them where the rest of their classmates would see and ooze with jealousy. But thanks to her stupid failing grade in a course that she’d been promised would be  _ easy _ , there’ll be no sun and fun for Sansa Stark for the next four weeks.

Instead, she’ll be stuck inside of a gloomy classroom inside of Winterfell High after all, taking geography all over again so that her horrifying grade doesn’t end up affecting her chances of getting into a good college.

Students at King’s Landing Academy aren’t  _ supposed _ to fail classes. They don’t even offer make-ups in the summer, because people so rarely find themselves in Sansa’s situation. She supposes the only perk of having to take the class in Winterfell instead is that none of her usual classmates can  _ see _ her, and she can pretend to the teens from back home that she’s just here to try and get ahead.

Except Sansa’s plans are thwarted the second she sees the easily-recognizable curls of her brother Robb’s best friend, Jon Snow, slinking into the classroom just before she does.

* * *

Sansa pushes her long red locks out from behind her ears, letting them fall forward and cast a partial shadow over her face as she enters the room shortly after Jon. She doesn’t want to be here, she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s here, she doesn’t want to draw any  _ attention  _ to herself.

This isn’t like a normal class, where Sansa can proudly raise her hand and give an answer and  _ shine _ . This is a subject Sansa is truly atrocious at, and she takes a seat in the back left corner of the room, as far out of the spotlight as she can possibly be.

In the back  _ right _ corner of the room, Jon seems to have the same idea. He doesn’t even see her; his head is ducked down, staring at his desk, and Sansa immediately pulls her book out of her backpack and buries her head in it.

She may as well start studying now — gods know she’s going to need it.

* * *

Obviously, Sansa knew she couldn’t go the whole four weeks without Jon or anyone else recognizing her. She just hadn't expected that she couldn't even go  _ four _ minutes.

Old Mr. Luwin, the man stuck inside this four-walled, flickering neon-lighted hell with them this summer, calls out all of their names, and Jon’s head snaps in her direction when he hears  _ Sansa Stark _ .

They don’t talk much, when he comes over to spend time with Robb, and as he stares at her in surprise, it’s the first time that Sansa realizes he has the kind of eyes that feel like they can look straight into your soul.

Right now, her soul is  _ mortified _ , and at least Jon seems to respect that, because he stares resolutely back at his desk, and he doesn’t make any effort to talk to her throughout their first day of class.

* * *

Class ends around mid-day, and Sansa immediately heads home to do the  _ heaps _ of reading that’s been assigned to her. Today they’d just been given an overview of what the class as a whole would be like: five continents to cover, although one was just a mess of ice. Sansa thinks that might be her favorite continent, since they hardly have to spend any time learning about it — although she still can’t remember whether it’s the cold place with the penguins or with the polar bears, or if it’s both.

Hopefully, she won’t have to know that for her tests.

They’ll do one  _ populated _ continent a week, and their last week will focus intensively on Westeros. It’s their home, and they should  _ presumably _ understand its layout, but Sansa would be lying if she said she was feeling anything but  _ dread _ about that last week. Why does Westeros have nine ‘constituent regions’ but it’s technically only ‘seven kingdoms’? It’s making her head hurt already, and she’s still got another three weeks before it’s even  _ relevant _ .

It’s dinner time when she finally finishes her work, and Sansa slams her text book closed much harder than is strictly necessary. Her younger sister Arya snickers at her as she does it, muttering about how that’s the closest Sansa’s ever come to getting into a fight. 

She huffs in annoyance as she sits down at the dinner table, as far from Arya as she can possibly get.

If Sansa thinks that Arya will be the last she hears about class for the day, though, she’s sorely mistaken. Her mother asks her about it in a kindly voice, as if it’s something  _ fun _ Sansa’s done rather than a punishment for somehow having no sense of direction. Her father even leans forward, eager to hear about what she’s learned today, and beside her, Bran is positively green with envy.

“Why can’t  _ I _ take a summer class? Sansa, can I do your homework?” he asks, and Arya snorts as Rickon calls Bran a nerd under his breath. He’s serious, though; since his accident, Bran’s been confined to less active hobbies, and he’s spent a lot of time reading and learning about anything and everything, really. At least a class would be a way for him to do that  _ with _ other people around; Sansa would trade places with him in a heartbeat if she could. She’d pass him her homework, too, if it weren’t mostly reading; tomorrow morning, bright and early, she’ll have a pop quiz to make sure she actually  _ read _ what she was assigned, and she knows that her little brother wouldn’t exactly do her a whole lot of good  _ then _ .

It seems that none of the other Starks will just shut up and let her  _ forget _ that her summer plans are in shambles; even Robb, who she can usually depend on, is whining.

“Jon said he’s in your class, too; I can’t believe you’re going to be seeing more of my best mate this summer than  _ I _ am,” her older brother pouts, and Sansa takes a small bit of satisfaction in the fact that at least Robb’s holiday isn’t going to plan either.

Being one friend down in all his plans isn’t the same as actually being trapped in a geography class for four weeks, but at least it’s something.

* * *

It’s day two of twenty that Sansa has to spend in this classroom, and she’s right back in the same corner from yesterday, hiding from the classmates she has no interest in bonding with. She’s usually much more sociable than this, but she’s not here to socialize. She’s here to learn about the world —  _ again —  _ and to pass this class so she can put geography behind her. Friends will only be a distraction, one that might land her with another  _ F _ when all is said and done.

Class starts, and for the first hour or so Sansa stares between Mr. Luwin, the words he’s scribbling on the board, and her own notes, doing her best to keep up. It starts to drag, though — if she thought geography was miserable when it was less than an hour of her day, it’s just short of  _ torture _ when it’s hours on end of it. The board starts to look a little blurry, and all Mr. Luwin’s words start to sound the same, and finally, Sansa breaks her concentration to glance around the classroom, giving herself a moment to clear her mind and hoping she doesn’t miss anything terribly important.

Her eyes drift over the cracking wallpaper, and the initials carved into the corners of desks, the backs of the heads of the students sitting in front of her, and then finally they land on Jon. He’s staring straight ahead at Mr. Luwin, his forehead creased in concentration, only his eyes giving away just how  _ lost _ he is already.

Gods, this is going to be a long summer for the both of them.

* * *

Sansa can tell when her siblings at home wake up — after they've luxuriously slept in, of course — because around 10 a.m., her phone starts buzzing against her ankle, vibrating so many times that she has to reach down and pull it out of her backpack. In the span of minutes, she’s gotten about six texts from Robb, begging her to send pictures of Jon because he’s  _ already _ going through withdrawals, and Sansa has to resist the urge to roll her eyes.

She keeps her phone in her lap so that the buzzing noises aren’t quite so  _ loud _ , and as soon as they have their morning break, her resolve to keep to herself crumbles and she saunters over to Jon.

“Your best friend,” she announces, sliding her phone onto his desk so he can see the notifications from Robb still lit up on her screen, “Is ridiculous.”

“Don’t you mean your brother?” Jon challenges, arching an eyebrow at Sansa before letting his eyes glide over the messages. They don’t talk directly to each other like this very often — rare moments here and there where they bump into each other at the Stark refrigerator grabbing snacks or passing hellos on the hallway, really. Arya’s much more likely to spend time with Robb and his friends than Sansa is, so she kind of didn’t know what to expect but somehow Jon teasing her back hadn’t crossed her mind. 

“Nope, I refuse to claim him when he’s being this needy,” Sansa informs him, taking her phone back and pulling up the camera. Maybe Robb will shut up and stop interrupting her focus if she actually does what he asks and sends a picture, and she tilts the camera towards Jon, trying to catch him by surprise.

Jon sees what she’s doing, though, and throws an arm up to cover his face just in time. Sansa snaps the pic anyway, and Jon asks, “You’re not actually sending that, are you?” right as Sansa indeed hits send.

“Oops?” she says, not sounding very sorry about it at all. “You’re very photogenic,” she says sarcastically, showing him a picture that’s all forearm and a mop of curls, no distinguishable facial features anywhere to be seen. 

“Aye, Robb certainly seems to think so,” Jon replies dryly, as her brother’s angry emojis pop up on the screen.  _ NOT GOOD ENOUGH, SANSA! _ It’s just the first of many messages in all caps, and Sansa sighs heavily.

“I’m going to have to turn my phone  _ off _ at this rate,” Sansa informs him, a dramatic edge to her tone. “Margaery’s going to think I’ve fallen  _ off _ the planet when I’m supposed to be studying it, and all because  _ you _ couldn’t just give Robb what he wants.” Not that she would be texting Margaery back during class anyway — Sansa can’t afford to be docked points for not paying attention, but she keeps up the act anyway because Jon’s slightly guilty facial expression is more entertaining than anything else that’s happened the past two days.

“Okay, okay,” Jon relents, attempting to smile for a picture after all. He looks like he’s grimacing more than anything, though, and Sansa doesn’t think this picture’ll make her brother any happier than the last. Robb’s probably going to keep pestering her no matter what she does, Sansa realizes, so she gets an idea — if her brother’s going to be obnoxious, she may as well  _ win _ . She decides to turn the camera onto selfie mode and crouch beside Jon instead. 

“What are you doing?” he asks her, as Sansa stretches a long, pale arm out to hold the camera towards both of them.

“Looking miserable with you,” she tells him, and Jon actually chuckles at that. A  _ real  _ chuckle, like the kind that’s usually reserved for Robb and maybe Arya, and the fact that she’s gotten Robb’s broody friend to look happy, even for a fleeting moment, feels like another small victory. Sansa clicks at just the right moment, catching both of them smiling, and sends it to Robb.

_ Go away, he’s mine now _ , she sends, with a kiss-blowing emoji for her brother, and her message elicits another small laugh from Jon. “Oh, he’s going to  _ hate _ that,” Jon tells her, and she nods her head in agreement as Mr. Luwin comes back in and tells them they’ve got just a couple more minutes of break.

Jon and Sansa use that time to move her things over to the left corner desk beside his — so she can update him on any more messages she gets from Robb, of course.

And maybe, because if they’re going to suffer through the next four weeks of class, they may as well suffer together.

* * *

The third day of class passes in the same boring drone as the first two, although at least now when Sansa’s confused by something, she can turn to Jon and feel better about her fate, seeing an equally puzzled look reflected back in his eyes. They’re supposed to have a  _ test _ on this on Friday, but neither one of them can seem to even remember what’s on their  _ own _ continent, much less identify places in Essos, Sothoryos, or…  _ whatever  _ that other one is called, the one that’s only really recently been explored out west. 

There’s no getting out of this, but at least they’re making the best of it together.

* * *

On the fourth day, they start passing notes. At first, it’s just Sansa telling Jon to  _ stop tapping his pen so loudly _ , because everyone’s going to start staring at them if they keep it up, and then it’s Jon asking her if he thinks Mr. Luwin will notice if he eats his snack during class — Sansa tells him it’s probably quieter than his growling stomach, and to just  _ go _ for it. Here and there, it’s a question about something their teacher has just said that one or the other of them missed, but by day’s end, it’s devolved into nonsense.

_ At least I can remember the name of the Basilisk Isles because of Harry Potter _ , Sansa writes smugly when she sees Jon struggling to fill in the region on his practice map.

_ You’re only making it more confusing, the Summer Islands look more snaky, I’m going to label them wrong _ , Jon writes back, and Sansa can see the frown on his face as he erases something on his map and replaces it with something else.

_ They do not! You need to get your eyes checked _ , Sansa scribbles.

_ My eyes work fine!  _ Jon objects, staring pointedly at her to make his point.

_ Okay, prove it! What do you see when you look at me?  _ Sansa writes, expecting him to write back something like  _ a girl who’s terrible at geography _ or  _ Robb’s little sister _ . They’ve fallen into an easy banter since Tuesday, one she’d never imagined having with him, but she likes it — the playful teasing reminds her of Robb, and makes the hours locked up in this room pass quicker.

He doesn’t  _ always _ remind her of Robb, though.. Because Robb would never miss a chance to make fun of her, and he definitely wouldn’t make her heart skip a beat by writing back,  _ A girl kissed by fire _ .

_ Okay, I guess your eyes work after all _ , Sansa concedes, and she quickly writes something that changes the subject — not back to geography, of course, but to something that doesn’t make her wonder if Jon’s trying to compliment her or if he thinks implying that his best friend’s little sister is  _ gorgeous _ is just a normal, everyday thing to say. 

They pass the rest of the class like this, and if Mr. Luwin notices, he doesn’t say anything. Even with a test tomorrow, Sansa’s in a considerably better mood when she leaves class that day. She’d been embarrassed that Jon was there to see how bad she is at geography when the class had started, but now she’s got a backpack full of notes that prove she’s grateful for his presence.

* * *

Sansa pulls open her map again when she gets home, realizing that she’s going to have to study  _ twice _ as hard to get a good grade now that she’s ended up goofing off with Jon for half of the day.

Somehow, though, she doesn’t mind.

* * *

Friday’s class is blessedly short. They do a quick review session, and then they’re given their Sothoryos test, and once they’re done, they’re permitted to leave.

Sansa agonizes over hers, the shapes of each region of Sothoryos swimming together, and she can’t call back the clear picture in her head of what goes where. She feels confident in the Basilisk Isles, though, but getting  _ one _ part of her map right is hardly enough to pass.

Beside her, Jon scribbles his answers furiously, as if he just wants to dump what’s in his brain and get out of there before he can second guess himself. He finishes much quicker than Sansa, and she wonders if he’ll wait for her to pow-wow about the test, or if she’ll just talk to him again on Monday when they get their grades back.

Sansa spends an extra thirty minutes writing, erasing, and rewriting answers until she finally turns her test in, too, and after a glance down the hallway to make sure it’s empty, she heads home for two mostly geography free days.

* * *

Sansa spends most of Saturday with her old friend Jeyne Poole, lounging outside in the sunlight and dreading that Sunday she’ll have to do all her homework for Monday’s class.

This next week is going to be focused on  _ Essos _ , and she’s already upset about it. They’d covered it first, at King’s Landing Academy, and it was the test on Essos that had been the first  _ F _ she’d received in her life.

Sansa had thought it was a fluke then, but the bad geography grades had just kept coming.

Jeyne notices her mood and tries to cheer her up, distracting her by asking about her glamorous King’s Landing friends, and if there are any cute boys that Sansa has her eyes on.

For a second, her brain flashes an image of black curly hair and soulful grey eyes, but she blinks once and it’s gone.

Then she’s gushing about Margaery’s brothers and Joffrey Baratheon and even Harry Hardyng — basically any boy she can think of that isn’t Jon Snow.

* * *

Sansa wakes early on Sunday morning, but she stays abed, avoiding her geography homework for as long as possible. By the time she finally gets up, eats breakfast, and showers, it’s close to midday, and she can hear the noise of her siblings around the house.

Arya and Rickon seem to be having some sort of Nerf gun fight, Bran’s at the kitchen table, snacking and reading a book, and she hears the sound of Robb and Theon shouting at some videogame inside of his room.

Sansa flops onto her bed, still in her towel, and scrolls through Instagram to put off thinking about  _ stupid _ Essos and all the things she’s not looking forward to relearning this week. She watches Margaery’s story, a series of pictures from high tea in her garden with her grandmother, and Sansa wishes  _ she _ were there, visiting with her friend like she’d wanted instead of at home with a stack of reading to do.

She can’t avoid it any longer, though — maybe if she gets through it quickly, she’ll even get a chance to have some fun like her siblings — and she stands up with a dramatic sigh, one she thinks no one can hear but her. 

Except as she stands up, she realizes that she’d left her door half-open when she’d meant to close it, and she hears a chuckle from the other side of the door.

“That excited about the reading, huh?” Jon asks as he steps inside tentatively, the smile wiping from his face instantly as he realizes he’s walked in on Sansa in nothing but her towel.

“Sorry, the door was open — " he stammers, jerking his eyes away from her in a motion that looks surprisingly forced. “I’ll just be…” he trails off, hastily disappearing back into the hallway, and Sansa’s cheeks are flushed dark red as the door noisily closes behind him.

* * *

Jon still looks mortified when Sansa finds him in the kitchen by himself a few minutes later. She’s fully dressed this time, but he still won’t meet her eyes until she says, “At least it was you and not Theon,  _ he _ wouldn’t have had the decency to look away.”

Sansa knows that the only thing that binds her brother’s two closest friends together is Robb himself, and that left to their own devices they’d probably be enemies rather than grudging acquaintances. She can understand why, too — Theon’s lovable in his own way, but still a bit of a prick, and he’s certainly not as quietly respectful as Jon is.

Her comment lands the way she hopes it will, and Jon looks up, the ghost of a smile etched into his features. 

“Still,” he says sheepishly, “Maybe we should actually properly exchange numbers so that next time I can  _ warn _ you before I come barging in to complain about classwork.” 

“So you can text me from one room over? How very millenial of you,” Sansa giggles, although she’s already taking his phone from him and typing her number into his contacts. They have each other on social media, but they don’t really…  _ talk _ , unless Robb’s there too. This is a new line of communication they’re opening up here, and she’s kind of excited about it.

"See you on the other side of all that reading," Sansa tells him with a wave, disappearing back into her room as he heads home. Barely half an hour passes before she gets a text from Jon, though, and she smiles at the exploded-brain emojis that pop up on her screen when he asks why the Bay of Dragons has so many different names. The reading suddenly doesn't seem so daunting, knowing that Jon's just a text away, suffering through it the same as she is.

Jon’s always been cute, in his weird, brooding way. He’s always seemed nice enough, too, well-mannered and like he’d be pleasant to talk to. But Starks don’t always share as well as they should, and Robb and Arya have staked their claim in him for so long that she’d never expected to form her own kind of friendship with him.

Maybe Sansa has  _ one _ thing to thank geography for after all.


	2. week 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa and Jon grow closer thanks to their shared hatred of Essosi geography.

Monday morning Sansa is riddled with anxiety. After she’d finished her reading the night before, she’d texted Jon, trying to guess what their scores on the Sothoryos test would be, and though it had been amusing, to poke fun at each other like that, she’d  _ actually _ had nightmares about having a 27 out of 100 plastered on the top of her paper when she got to class.

She’s cranky, and exhausted, and she can’t believe she has  _ three _ more weeks of this bloody class to suffer through.

Her outlook is a little less bleak when she slides into her normal seat and sees that Jon’s already there, two cups from Starbucks on top of his desk. He slides one over to Sansa, smiling shyly.

“Robb said you liked London Fogs,” he shrugs, and Sansa flashes him a warm look of gratitude.

“Thanks, you have  _ no _ idea how bad I needed this. I could barely sleep a wink last night,” she shudders, thinking about the test they’re about to get back and how if it’s bad enough, she may be on a path to retaking this class  _ again _ during summer session two.

* * *

It turns out  _ neither _ of them failed their test. Jon’s gotten a C+ -- he  _ did _ mix up the Basilisk Isles and the Summer Isles, after all of that, and Sansa’s gotten a B-. The grades aren’t awful, not for  _ them _ , but they’re not the kind of grades they can coast by on, either.

There’s still a lot of hard work ahead of them, so they make a pact to have study sessions every night this week. If they  _ combine _ their brain power, there’s no way Essos can bring them down.

* * *

Monday evening, Robb looks ecstatic, when he gets home from swimming with Theon and sees that Jon’s car is parked outside of their house. He’s less ecstatic when he realizes it’s not a surprise visitor for him and that Jon’s legitimately just there to see Sansa.

The two of them have their things sprawled out on the coffee table in the den, their knees bumping against each other on the couch as they lean forward and point at maps. Sansa has even made them flashcards, with fast facts about each region on them, and she reads them aloud to Jon and then she asks him to not just name the part of the kingdom, but show her where it is, too.

Robb stands behind them, casting a shadow over their map outlines, and he doesn’t move until they pay attention to him.

“Can I help you?” Sansa asks crossly, and Jon just smiles. Whether it’s at her brother’s neediness or at her no-nonsense attitude, she’s not sure, but Robb’s got their attention now, just like he wanted.

“Aren’t you done yet? This stuff’s easy— look, Astapor, Meereen, Yunkai, Pentos, Vaes Dothrak…” Robb rattles off the areas as if they’re nothing, and it’s  _ infuriating _ . Sansa’s brain isn’t wired to remember shapes on a map or directions like he does, and she smacks at his hand to stop him from pointing.

“ _ No _ , we’re not done yet! That may be easy for you, but it’s not easy for us, go away,” Sansa tells him, fixing him with a glare that would make their mother proud.

Robb grumbles about how they should hurry up so Jon can hang out with him, but he slinks away to his room anyway, still muttering under his breath as he goes.

“ _ That _ was impressive. Who knew you had such a withering stare, Stark?” Jon asks her, and once they hear Robb’s door close, they’re right back to business.

* * *

They’re good at ignoring distractions, Robb-shaped and otherwise, for the rest of Monday night, and on Tuesday and Wednesday, too. By Thursday, though, Sansa feels like they’re studying just to study. If they don’t know it by now, Sansa doubts they’ll ever know it, and staring at their same maps and flashcards is only making her brain feel blurry.

“You okay?” Jon asks her as she rubs her temples, trying to stave off the headache that’s coming her way. He squares his body towards her, away from the map that neither one of them really wants to look at anymore. They’ve been working so hard, they’ve been  _ such  _ good students — and they deserve a reward for it, don’t they?

“We should go get ice cream,” Sansa declares suddenly, expecting Jon to shoot her down. He’s always so  _ responsible _ , Jon Snow, and Sansa doesn’t have Robb’s same powers of corrupting him and getting him to let loose.

Or at least, she didn’t  _ think _ she had those kind of powers, but with the way he immediately agrees and hops up to grab his keys, Sansa feels like maybe her older brother’s Jon Snow skills are rubbing off on her after all.

* * *

“You know what’s the stupidest part of all of this?” Sansa asks him as she licks a drop of her lemon ice cream off of her spoon. “That I didn’t even  _ have _ to take geography. It was a history  _ elective _ , but I chose it because it was supposed to be  _ easy _ , and when I got that first test back, I’d never felt so lied to in my entire life. And then I went and  _ failed _ and had to take summer school to boost my grade in a class that I could have completely avoided in the first place.”

Sansa dips her spoon into her scoop of lemon ice cream again, looking expectantly at Jon. He’s always been quieter than Theon and Robb, though, and his quietness still sometimes extends to his time with Sansa. She’s more subdued than the boys, and doesn’t overpower Jon the same way that they do, but she still sometimes dominates the conversation.

Here, now, though, Sansa doesn’t want to do all the talking. Jon knows plenty about her just from being a family friend for so long, but the more time she spends with him, the more she wants to know about  _ him _ .

“What about you? How did you end up stuck with me all summer?” she asks, bumping her hip against his lightly. He spins his spoon around in his own ice cream cup, that thoughtful Jon look in his eyes before he speaks.

“Well, it wasn’t because anyone told me lies about it being  _ easy _ , although I’ve got to say, sitting next to you all summer is better than sitting next to Robb all year and watching him  _ ace _ it,” Jon starts, shaking his head. It’s self-deprecating, like it’s been almost every time he’s compared himself to Robb when they talked, and she wonders if he’s always done that, the downwards comparisons. She doesn’t like them, and she wishes she could think of something to say to assure him he’s  _ just _ as great as he and other people seem to think her brother is.

Words don’t come in this situation, though, because they  _ are _ both garbage at geography in comparison to Robb. Sansa just nods her head to let him know she’s listening and then puts another spoonful of her dessert into her mouth, signaling for Jon to keep going.

“I figured it would be… useful, when I go into the military someday. To know where things are, to know about what it’s like there. It seemed like the logical choice, but I’m complete rubbish at it, maybe that’s some kind of sign I  _ shouldn’t _ go down a path where I could be deployed all over the world,” Jon admits, his eyes downcast as he says it. It’s all news to Sansa, though; Robb’s always so blasé about what his future might hold, and it’s somehow surprising to her that his best friend has his whole future planned out.

_ And _ that he apparently wants to be in the military. She supposes he has the  _ discipline _ for it, that’s not the part that catches her off guard. It’s the idea of him  _ leaving _ , of going off and maybe even going to war, if the occasion calls for it, that she’s having a harder time picturing.

“I never knew you wanted to join the military,” she admits softly, cocking her head to the side to look at him curiously.

“Well, it’s not as if I ever told you. I’ve never even talked about it with Robb,” Jon tells her, and Sansa opens her mouth to ask why, but Jon’s already anticipated her question.

“He never  _ asked _ ,” Jon says with a roll of his eyes. “And I just… never had a place where I felt like I fit. I thought maybe that would help me find mine.”

_ That _ is less surprising. Jon’s been around their house so much the last few years, it’s a wonder that he has any time left over to spend at home. She knows that he lives with a great uncle of his, named Aemon or Aegon or something of the sort, and every once in a while he makes off-handed comments about his money-grubbing uncle Viserys, or his free-spirited, world-traveler aunt Daenerys. He never really sounds connected to them, though, and suddenly it makes sense to Sansa, why he’d want to get away and forge his own path like that.

“You fit with us,” Sansa tells him, and she shifts her empty ice cream cup to her left hand so that she can wrap her right around Jon in a half-hug. “You’ll always have a place with the Starks.”

Robb and Arya would approve of Sansa providing Jon this comfort, she’s sure of it. And two weeks ago, she would have only been saying it on their behalf, an offer on behalf of the siblings she knows care for him so deeply.

The funny thing, though, is that now, it’s  _ not _ just about Robb and Arya. It applies to Sansa, too; Jon Snow’s been a constant presence in her life, and that presence is only getting stronger, more personal now. 

Jon wraps his left arm around her, half-hugging her back, and it kind of feels like he’s saying  _ thank you _ . 

“We should probably get back and finish studying, huh?” Jon asks as he tosses their trash into a bin, and Sansa nods. He looks a little bit embarrassed still, from his admission or maybe just because he’s not the best at accepting her kind of sentiments.

He’s not so embarrassed that he drops his arm from around her middle, though. Jon doesn’t do that until they’re back at his car, when he opens the door for her and then drives them back to the Stark’s house.

* * *

They don’t actually study any more Thursday night, but in spite of that, Sansa feels surprisingly confident as they walk into the classroom on Friday morning for their Essos test. 

She and Jon take their seats, and while Sansa feels calm and collected, Jon seems to be all nerves. His leg is bouncing up and down under his desk, and he’s tapping his pen on his desk as he waits for Mr. Luwin to pass their tests out.

Without thinking, Sansa reaches out to grasp his hand in hers, squeezing it for luck.

Jon’s eyes go wide, and she thinks maybe she’s overstepped, but then he flashes her a grateful smile. She drops his hand as their tests land on their desk, but her reassuring touch has done its job. Sansa doesn’t hear any more nervous tapping from Jon the whole time they’re taking their test.

* * *

Monday morning, Sansa’s almost  _ excited _ for her and Jon to get their grades back. They worked extraordinarily hard last week, and she thinks she might have at  _ least _ gotten a regular B, no minus, this time. She knows she mixed up the major cities inside of the Bay of Dragons, reversing Yunkai and Astapor even though Robb had pointed them out to her numerous times, but other than that, she’s feeling  _ good _ .

At least, she is until Jon’s  _ late _ . The bell rings, and class starts, and the desk next to her sits empty.

Five minutes pass, then ten, then twenty. She pulls out her phone to see if Jon’s texted her, but there are no messages, and she doesn’t want to seem  _ too _ desperate by texting him in the middle of class.

She waits until the midmorning break to message instead and ask what happened to him, and she’s so caught up in wondering where Jon is that she forgets to even celebrate the fact that she got a B+ on their test. 

* * *

Jon doesn’t text her back, and instead of listening to Mr. Luwin and taking notes for  _ the both of them _ like she should, Sansa spends the second half of the morning  _ stewing _ . Margaery had begged her to skive off that day and go boating with her and Robb and Theon, because her family was on holiday nearby and she was just  _ dying _ to sneak away and spend some time with her bff.

But Sansa had decided to be  _ good _ and go to her class, assuming she’d at least have Jon’s company to make it a little brighter. Only he’s not here, and by the time she gets home, she’s  _ convinced _ herself that Robb made the same ask of him that Margaery had made of her, and she’s  _ livid _ , assuming that Jon had played hookie and gone boating without a thought or care for how his absence would make Sansa feel.

It would explain the lack of a response, right? If they’re out on the water, of  _ course _ they can’t message her and tell her what fun she’s missing, or even mention that they’re  _ alive and well _ and not dead in a ditch somewhere en route to Winterfell High.

Perhaps it’s unreasonable to be so annoyed, but Sansa can’t help it, and she doesn’t even eat a snack when she gets home, just goes straight up to her room to sulk her way through her homework.

* * *

It’s nearly dinnertime when Sansa hears the front door open, and she doesn’t  _ rush _ down the stairs to glower, per se, but she does very quickly make a show of needing to to down to the kitchen to get water, where she very  _ conveniently _ runs into the returning boaters.

Theon, Robb, Jeyne, Margaery, even Arya and her friend Gendry… but no Jon.

A sunkissed Margaery squeals at the sight of her, throwing her arms around Sansa instantly. 

“Sans! Oh, we  _ missed _ you today, it’s too bad you and Jonny just couldn’t skip your class, it would have been  _ so _ nice to have you there,” Margaery coos, and Sansa hugs her back happily, both because she’s been missing her friend and because Jon  _ didn’t _ ditch her to go boating after all.

Except, as Margaery releases her and starts gushing about all the fun they’ve had, she can’t help but wonder…

Where  _ has _ Jon been all day, then?

* * *

Halfway through dinner with Robb and the others, her phone  _ finally _ buzzes, and it’s only two words, but it’s  _ Jon _ , so two words is more than enough after a day spent obsessing over his whereabouts.

Especially when those two words are  _ Sick. Sorry. _

Sansa has the decency to feel a  _ little _ bit guilty that she was internally cursing his name this morning as she demands Jon’s address from Robb. Margaery flashes her a mischievous look, one she's sure will come with follow up questions later, and Robb says Sansa doesn't _need_ it, knowing where Jon lives will only help her hog his best friend more. Sansa persists, though, She claims it’s because she has to go over and take him his homework, so after some more whining about how Sansa’s  _ stealing _ him, he finally relents.

It’s not really about class, though. Sansa barely finished her  _ own _ homework, and she certainly doesn’t have notes worth a damn from today’s class. What she  _ does _ have, though, is soup, and tissues, and whatever kinds of medicines she can pull out of her cabinet, and some lemon sherbet, too, for good measure.

Sansa punches the address Robb gave her into her GPS, and then she’s off towards Jon’s, bag overflowing with ‘get well soon’ supplies.

* * *

Only Jon’s car is in the driveway when Sansa gets there, and maybe she hasn’t thought this through enough. Maybe he’s gone right back to sleep and doesn’t  _ want _ visitors, or maybe he’s experiencing seriously embarrassing bodily functions and doesn’t want her around.

She just  _ missed _ him today, for whatever reason, and she worried about him, and she wants to make sure he’s okay. And maybe it’s unlike her to impulsively show up at a house she’s never been to before, but Sansa sees a light on in a window downstairs, and before she can second-guess herself, she marches to the door and knocks.

It takes a few moments, but she hears movement from somewhere inside the house, and then the door is being opened slowly, like it’s taking great effort to pull on it.

“Sansa?” Jon asks weakly when he sees her, and she’s glad she came again. He looks a  _ mess _ , his eyes droopy and his hair matted with sweat, his mouth hanging open like he can’t breathe without sucking in large gulps of air. 

“Brought you soup?” she says cheerily, all of her irritation from earlier completely erased at the sad, sick, weirdly adorable sight of him. 

* * *

Sansa follows Jon into his house and towards the couch where he’s apparently been sleeping all day. His guardian is out of town for a quick trip, so Jon’s been doing his best to fend for himself, but he looks completely miserable, and Sansa quickly gets the sense that he didn’t have mild foods or the right meds to feel better. 

“Gods, you should have texted me sooner, I would have brought you Dayquil hours ago! Now I guess you’ll just have to skip straight to Nyquil,” Sansa mutters, more to herself than Jon. He’s sitting on the couch again, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cape and a slightly glazed look in his eyes. Sansa is unpacking her medicine bag on the coffee table, letting out a soft  _ aha _ when she finds the medicine in question. 

She looks around the end table for water or Gatorade or  _ something _ to help him swallow the pill, and is horrified to see that he doesn’t even have any liquids nearby. “Don’t you know how to take care of yourself at all?” she scolds as she makes her way in the direction of the kitchen, acting as if she owns a place that she’s never even stepped foot inside of until now.

She flings open his refrigerator, relieved there’s at least an unopened water bottle on the top shelf for her to grab. Under different circumstances, Sansa might have been nosy and inspected things a bit more, but she has a sick friend to attend to now, and she’s back in the living room quick as a whirlwind, opening the cap and passing it to Jon. She hovers her hands near it as he drinks, in case he’s even weaker than he looks and needs some assistance, and she’s relieved when he takes the pills without spilling water all down his face. 

“Good,” Sansa says more to herself than to him as she turns back to her supply kit, uncapping the thermos of chicken noodle soup for him. “Do you think you can be as coordinated with this, or should I go get you a spoon?”

Jon shakes his head — he must be  _ starving _ , because he gratefully takes the thermos from her, and she’s so focused on his well-being that she barely notices the shiver that goes up her spine when their fingers brush during the transaction.

* * *

Jon manages to get the soup down with only a couple of drops spilled down the front of his white t-shirt, and Sansa pats uselessly at them, as if a paper towel’s actually going to clean him off. It doesn’t; all it does is leave her with the strange observation that Jon’s chest feels very toned, even through a paper towel and his cotton tee.

Once he’s fed, and got medicine in him, Sansa tucks him in and wipes his sweat-dried hair away from his eyes. He seems to release a lot of the tension he’s been holding when she does that, so Sansa continue to run her fingers soothingly through his hair, even though it’s a little bit gross at the moment. 

Too bad; it usually looks so clean and bouncy. A good bit more touchable than it is right now, but Jon looks at peace instead of miserably ill, so she sucks it up and doesn’t let herself think too long and hard about whether she’s still got hand sanitizer in her purse. 

“This medicine better work, I need you back in class tomorrow,” she tries to tease him, but her voice is thicker with emotion than Sansa expects it to be. Gods, when did she get so attached to Jon Snow that she can’t even survive four hours of class without him? The realization shocks her, that he could be there her whole life and she hardly talked to him, but one class together and suddenly he’s a permanent fixture to her. 

“You almost sound like you missed me,” he says blearily, but even his Nyquil-slurred words don’t hide the fact that he’s  _ surprised _ .

Is it really such a revelation to him? Sansa knows she’s never really gone out of her way to spend time with him and Robb and occasionally Arya, but it’s never been because she doesn’t  _ like _ him or anything. She just… never felt like she fit into their dynamic.

Now she does fit, though, and she nods her head, not sure if Jon sees it or not since his eyes seem to finally be slipping closed. 

“I guess I never thought you cared,” Jon admits sleepily, and Sansa wonders if he would have said that without a fever and medicine to coax it out of him. Probably not — he’s so reserved with things like this sometimes, biting his tongue when there’s really no need to.

“I always cared,” Sansa whispers, and he’s sort of slumping beneath her touch, so she thinks maybe he doesn’t hear it when she adds quietly, “I just care  _ more _ now. A lot more than I intended to.”

* * *

Five minutes later, Sansa is sure that Jon is soundly asleep. 

She can’t stay all night to take care of him, much as she wants to — her mother would flip out about her spending the night alone with a boy who's not in any _danger._ Plus, she’d stay up all night watching Jon’s steady breathing and  _ never _ make it through class tomorrow,  _ and _ she knows that Jon would be absolutely mortified if he woke up and Sansa was still there.

Still, she lingers a little bit longer, making sure that he looks comfortable, arranging things he might need when he wakes up, and scribbling him a quick note that she’ll have her ringer on tonight and he can call her if he needs anything at all.

Then, without giving herself even a moment to analyze it, Sansa presses a quick kiss to his forehead, and heads home with hopes that Jon will be good as new and back in class beside her come morning. 


	3. week 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Sansa complete their third week of summer school as Sansa starts to realize her shifting feelings towards Jon...

So Jon  _ isn’t _ good as new in the morning, but he  _ is _ back in class, and when he walks in the door, Sansa rewards him with a near blinding smile.

“Welcome back, slacker,” she teases him gently, pushing a bottle of orange juice towards him. He probably could have stood with some coffee, too, but the Vitamin C will do him some good and has less of a chance of mingling strangely with the medicine she’d left for him.

“My hero,” Jon chuckles weakly, sliding into his desk. He still sounds congested, his eyes still look drowsy, but they come alive just a little at the sight of Sansa, and she figures that’s good enough.

“ _ My _ hero. If you ever leave me here alone again, you’re going to seriously regret it,” she retorts, pointing towards the list of topics for today’s class that are on the board. She’s dreading it — it’s geography, she’s  _ always _ dreading it — but Jon being back at least makes her hate the whole thing a little less.

* * *

Jon heads home to rest after class, still feeling weak from his whirlwind illness. Sansa doesn’t  _ pout _ about it, per se, but she does miss having a study buddy at the kitchen table with her as she pores over maps of the west.

And if she’s  _ slightly _ disappointed every time her phone buzzes and it’s Margaery instead of Jon, well… it’s just because she wants a good grade.

And  _ maybe  _ a little bit of her annoyance is because Margaery keeps asking if she can send her pictures of Robb  _ shirtless _ around the house. 

And a  _ lot _ of it is because when she types in all caps  _ NO!!!!! _ , Margaery replies that  _ she _ would be a dear and take shirtless pictures of Jon for Sansa.

As if Sansa would even want those.

* * *

Except that night, Sansa has a strange dream. She’s on a boat, like she would have been on Monday if she’d skived off from class, and Margaery and Robb and Theon are all there; Gendry and Arya too. She  _ knows _ her siblings and her friends — they’re always loud, and vibrant, but in her dream, they’re blurry and muffled. Like they’re not what’s important.

Jon’s in the dream, too. He’s in the dream in screaming color, smiling and laughing and beckoning her to come join him, and he is, quite irritatingly, shirtless.

Or at least, wakeful Sansa would be annoyed by Jon’s lack of shirt. Dreamland Sansa seems to float towards him, and she feels a giddy lightness, one that feels so achingly real as he takes her hand and leads her towards the front of the boat.

She wakes up abruptly, and she can almost still feel it — the wind in her hair, the sun on her face, the warmth of Jon’s hand clinging to hers.

It’s Margaery’s fault somehow, she knows it must be because of her barrage of texts the night before, because  _ Sansa _ doesn’t want those kinds of things with her brother’s best friend…

Does she?

* * *

Wednesday morning when she comes into class, Sansa can’t help but feel a  _ little _ weird the second she spots Jon. Obviously, he’s fully clothed, waiting at his desk, perking up at the sight of her. But he’s just… cuter than usual, somehow. His curls are messier and he’s wearing a loose cotton t-shirt and something about him makes Sansa feel a little  _ floatier _ than she has around him in the past.

She doesn’t imagine what he looks like  _ underneath _ the t-shirt, but she can’t help but picture it just a little all the same. 

After a quick greeting, Sansa spends most of the first half of the morning staring resolutely at her notes, avoiding eye contact with Jon. She can feel his eyes boring into her, though, like he  _ knows _ she’s more jittery and distracted than she usually is, and when they break in the middle of the morning, Sansa runs off to the bathroom and doesn’t come back until their time’s nearly up.

“I’m not still contagious, you know,” Jon mutters to her, the hint of a laugh in his voice. She’s relieved that  _ that’s  _ all he thinks is wrong; it’s much better than having to admit her thoughts keep trailing to whether his torso  _ really _ looks like it had in her dreams or not.

“Good,” Sansa replies, doing her best to try to smile at him. It’s flatter than it might usually be, but it seems to be enough for Jon, and the way he smiles back makes her stomach swoop a little right as Mr. Selmy calls class back to order. 

* * *

That dumb, barely populated continent in the west can  _ not _ hold Sansa’s attention. And after two hours of resolutely  _ avoiding _ looking at Jon, spending the next two  _ staring  _ at him seems like a horrible plan, really.

Yet if she doesn’t do something to distract herself, Sansa has a bad feeling that that’s exactly what she’ll wind up doing. His confused, slack-jawed look when he doesn’t understand the lesson, his dopey smile when he gets something right; the dimple in his cheek, the way he has to brush his hair out of his face when it gets too unruly..

Sansa’s not sure when she started noticing so much about Jon; it feels like it happened all at once, although she’s sure if she really looked back on the last two weeks, she could see it slowly sneaking up on her.

_ I hate you _ , she texts under the table to Margaery, finally, when she can’t bear it any longer.

_ Moi? Whatever for, dear?  _ Her best friend types back almost instantly, which would make Sansa happy, Margaery’s willingness to drop everything to reply to her, if it didn’t also make her roll her eyes. Sansa had spent more than two whole weeks paying attention to her coursework instead of distractedly messaging her friend, but it’s like Margaery  _ knew _ as soon as she started planting weird thoughts about Jon into her head that the messages would start rolling in.

_ For thinking Robb’s hot. Gross _ , Sansa lies at first, then starts to type again. She’s sure Margaery is watching the bubbles pop up and then disappear, and finally Sansa gives up and waits.

She doesn’t have to wait long.

_ And? _

_ Isn’t that enough of a reason?  _ Sansa types, glancing up in between to make sure that Mr. Selmy isn’t watching her as she ignores him and hopes for the best. There’s not  _ that _ much to learn this week; Sansa can just teach it to herself later, she’s sure it’ll be fine.

_ It’s a terrible reason; I’d be a delightful sister-in-law _ , Margaery says entirely too casually. Sansa’s not sure when the jokes about marrying her brother started — they’ve only been around each other a handful of times — but her brain’s so filled with thoughts of  _ Jon _ right now that she almost doesn’t even care that Margaery’s messing with her like this.  _ Besides, I  _ know _ you. You’re not mad about me and your hot brother, you’re mad about yourself and your hot brother’s friend ;-) _

At that, Sansa’s eyes dart towards Jon. He  _ is _ hot, she has  _ eyes _ , but his hotness has never had her feeling all  _ ridiculous _ like this before. He’s  _ Jon _ . He’s Robb’s Jon,  _ Arya’s _ Jon, but he’s not  _ Sansa’s _ Jon. She shouldn’t be thinking about him like this, and she firmly believes that she  _ still  _ wouldn’t be thinking about him like this if her best friend hadn’t decided to be loveably annoying about it.

_ I hate you _ , Sansa repeated, and she can feel Jon’s eyes boring into her again as she texts Margaery. He’s clearly curious, wondering why she’s leaving  _ him _ in charge of taking notes. He might even be  _ worried _ , thinking there’s a family emergency or something, and Sansa feels a pang of guilt for zoning out and texting her best friend like this.

But not enough guilt to stop  _ doing _ it. Instead, she fills Margaery in on the shirtless dream, and tells her to _ focus _ when she coos about how she and Robb were featured in Sansa’s dream as well. 

Focusing doesn’t do much good either, though. Focused Margaery mostly sends a bunch of haikus about Jon and Sansa and what pretty babies they’d make at worst, and kissy faces at best.

By the end of class, Sansa’s best friend has only made her feel  _ worse _ . Because if she doesn’t have a full-blown crush on Jon Snow by this point, it seems inevitable that she at least has a  _ half- _ blown crush on him — or at the very least, is attracted to him and would totally make out with him if he wanted to, and that is  _ so _ not what her summer school experience was supposed to turn into.

Still, Jon makes it way too  _ easy _ to blush and imagine all the scenarios Margaery is texting her, especially when he keeps gazing at her with those soulful dark eyes of his the whole entire rest of the class period.

* * *

Thankfully, Jon decides to spend another evening laying low and recuperating from his illness, so Sansa doesn’t have to spend all evening huddled close, crouched over books with him right after her  _ very _ inconvenient revelation. 

Sansa goes up to her room and plops herself down at her desk, book splayed out in front of her, and she is determined to catch up on what she’d zoned out on today. It’s not very much, truth be told; Sansa outlines the chapter and has made flashcards to go over before it’s even dinner time. For once, she even enjoys herself, sitting and eating with her family. She’s not stressed about time she’s wasting not studying, and she and Arya gang up on Robb, teasing him about all the flirting he apparently did with Margaery on Monday, so no one even asks Sansa questions about summer school.

It’s only when she’s back up in her room that she has time to go back to stressing, and even then, it’s not about her school work, it’s about  _ Jon _ . Does she  _ really _ have a crush on him, or did she just let herself get caught up in Margaery’s mania? Her best friend has a habit of sweeping her up in the excitement of things, only for Sansa to lose some of that enthusiasm later on her own.

The vibrating noise of her phone on the nightstand shakes her out of her thoughts, and she grabs at her phone eagerly, glad for the distraction.

Except when she sees it’s  _ Jon _ on the caller ID, the flipping sensation in her stomach seems a pretty clear indication that it wasn’t just Margaery putting words in her mouth earlier after all.  _ She _ , Sansa Stark, has definitely caught something that one  _ might _ be able to call feelings for Jon Snow.

* * *

“Hey!” Sansa says, perhaps a little too chirpily, when she picks up the call. But it’s fine if she  _ sounds _ happy. Jon can’t see how extra-wide her smile is just to talk to him, after all — he can’t think it’s silly of her to be excited when he’s probably just calling to talk about geography anyway. 

“My night was too quiet without your attempts at memorizing countries through pop songs,” Jon replies instead, and it’s only then that it settles over her that Jon’s never  _ called _ her before. He’s texted her plenty, he’s come and knocked on the door to her room when he’s here to see Robb, but a phone call is a first, and his voice is just as low and rumbly and  _ pleasant _ to her through the airwaves as it is in person.

“That was  _ one _ time!” Sansa giggled, settling against the pillows propped up at the head of her bed, tucking her hair behind her ear so that she can hear him clearly through the phone. 

“One time that was the difference between a B and a B+ for you, if I remember right,” Jon says, reminding her of their study sessions last week, when they’d tried so many different study methods and she’d eventually gone and dragged him out for ice cream instead.

It feels like so long ago already — he’s ingrained himself so much more into her life during their geography class, but she supposes that it makes sense, right? An intense connection to him while they’re in an intense, knowledge-crammed summer school session?

Except Jon probably doesn’t see it the same way as she does. He probably still just sees her as a friendly face in class to share the misery with him, and when this is all over, things will go back to how they were before for him.

Sansa will just have to make the most of having Jon’s attention while she  _ does _ have it, then.

“And since I’m so smart, now you’re calling me to try and suck away all my knowledge for yourself?” Sansa teases, and she swears Jon  _ chuckles _ on the other end of the line. It’s not something he does a lot, laughing, but she feels like he’s been doing it more and more around her.

And okay, he  _ does _ ask her a bunch of questions about what he missed on Monday, and makes sure they had the same takeaways from class today (or in Sansa’s case, reading the book and re-learning what she’d ignored in class today) for a while. Somewhere during the conversation, though, talk of geography becomes less and less frequent, and before Sansa knows it, they’re talking about anything  _ but _ school as another hour passes.

They talk about Margaery and Robb, about Arya’s latest prank on her parents, about how Jon’s always wanted a husky like the Starks have but instead his Aunt Daenerys had once tried to give him a miniature komodo dragon for a pet instead. (He'd quickly gotten rid of it; he says Dany likes to give him things that are dangerous and illegal for some reason.) Sansa admits to him that once as a little girl she’d wanted to be a flight attendant, so she could travel the world.

Jon actually  _ does _ laugh out loud at that, given their current predicament when it comes to the world’s geography, and Sansa finds herself laughing along with him, too. Unbridled, more relaxed than she’s been all day — she hasn’t thought about Margaery’s words in ages, and it’s easier like this, to just enjoy  _ him _ without having to see his stupid, cute, stupidly cute face.

She doesn’t know what time they finally hang up, mostly because Sansa doesn’t think she  _ does _ hang up. She’s pretty sure she falls asleep just listening to him breathe on the line, and that night, Sansa dreams of Jon again.

* * *

Sansa’s dreams are softer this time. The colors don’t scream, they lull her, making her feel calm, peaceful, happy. All things that are easy to still associate with Jon when she wakes up.

She’s not nearly as tired as she should be, considering how late she’d stayed up on the phone. Jon, on the other hand, looks a little droopy when she spots him in class, but it doesn’t stop his eyes from crinkling at the edges when he smiles at the sight of her.

Mr. Selmy’s hardly even called class to order when a piece of paper appears on her desk, with Jon’s handwriting scrawled across it.

_ Figured I’d entertain you today, so you don’t kill your phone battery _ . She can hear the teasing lilt to his voice when she reads it, and she bites back a smile. She  _ likes _ when they do this, when they just pass notes back and forth instead of paying attention. It’s a luxury they can’t usually afford, but tomorrow’s their test and she feels  _ prepared _ for this one. The easiest of the continents, before they get to the final week. The  _ boss mode _ week, as Jon has been calling it, when they prove just how little they know of Westeros even after living there their entire lives.

Sansa writes back,  _ You’re probably much better at keeping me from having a meltdown than Margaery is _ without even thinking about the implications of it.

_ A meltdown, huh? What were you having a meltdown about? _

No, Sansa  _ definitely _ hadn’t thought about it before she’d passed him back that note, and now she quickly has to wrack her brain for an answer that isn’t  _ you _ . She vaguely hears Mr. Selmy mentioning their test tomorrow, though, and uses that as the perfect excuse.

_ About how this  _ isn’t _ the last week of class, and next week we have to try not to flunk  _ Westeros _ .  _

She accompanies it with an attempt at drawing a scared face — it looks much better as an emoji than it does as a Sansa-doodle, but it makes Jon shake his head at her fondly, at least.

He writes back that he’s nervous about the Westeros exam, too, and they spend the rest of the morning trying to brainstorm how they can  _ possibly _ pass geography this time.

* * *

Before the break, Sansa and Jon’s ideas for how to pass had been  _ ridiculous _ . Things like teleportation devices, time machines, laser imprints of maps on their eyelids, and stealing cryogenically frozen brains had all been mentioned.

But after break, Jon passes her a note with just  _ one _ word on it.

_ Road trip _ .

Sansa stares at it quizzically before she really grasps what he means. 

_ To learn about Westeros, we have to  _ see _ Westeros? _ She writes back quickly, and as soon as Jon reads her note, he nods his head affirmatively, just a slight movement that Mr. Selmy can’t see.

Sansa’s not sure she’s  _ ever _ smiled so bright. She’s sure  _ later _ , when she has time to really think about it, she’ll panic maybe just a little bit. Right now, though, the boy she’s  _ just _ realized she’s started to fall for has asked her to spend the weekend getting an up close and personal look at geography with him, and she couldn’t be more excited. 

* * *

They spend the rest of class flipping away from their  _ current _ section and pointing at random spots in the Westeros section instead. They don’t reach a consensus on where to go — Highgarden’s too far, and Sansa’s already  _ been _ there. Dorne’s even farther, and there are only so many hours between Friday’s test and Monday’s class. 

In the end, they table the discussion for later. They’ve still got to get through tomorrow’s exam on  _ this _ continent before they can focus on their own, anyway. And sure, Sansa feels more prepared than she has for any of her other tests so far, but Jon was absent on Monday, and she’s been  _ mentally  _ absent for a good bit of the week, so…

Jon comes home with her, to study like they normally do. Sansa might have told him they really didn’t need it and they could just take it easy tonight, but she likes having his company.

She also thinks she doesn’t want to find out if he’d call her again, if he didn’t come over. She’d have been disappointed if he didn’t, she thinks. And if he did, there’s something kind of dangerously intimate about how she’d fallen asleep just  _ listening _ to him last night. 

They hadn’t talked about it at all, the whole  _ phone call _ thing. Sansa figures it probably just wasn’t a big deal to Jon, not the way it was to her. Still, it’s a relief to have him in her house, in her space, where she can focus on  _ him _ rather than just obsessing over him from afar.

Their studying doesn’t last as long as it usually does, though. It’s hardly dinner time and Sansa feels overprepared for tomorrow’s test. Jon’s seeming pretty confident,too, so after dinner, they end up abandoning their books and playing board games with her siblings instead.

If they fail, then they fail. Sansa hates the idea of wasting another four weeks of summer cooped up inside away from the sun, but she doesn’t hate the idea of four more weeks of Jon having to hang out with  _ her _ instead of with Robb and Arya.

The thing is, though… Robb’s not whining about Sansa stealing Jon anymore. He immediately claims Theon as his partner, and Arya grumbles and asks why Theon doesn’t  _ ever _ go home, because now the numbers are uneven. They decide Bran will sit out this one, continuing to read in the corner instead, and Arya doesn’t even try to take Jon away from her. She dibs Rickon, muttering that he’s a stupider version of Robb but he’ll  _ do _ , and Jon turns to Sansa with one of those shy smiles of his. 

“Maybe we’ll be as good of a team as we are study buddies,” he suggests hopefully, and Rickon boos at that.

“Or maybe you’re going to get destroyed,” Arya says menacingly, cracking her knuckles in their faces, and then the games begin. 

* * *

They stay at it for a while, with Arya gleefully throwing pillows at Jon when she sinks their battleship, and Theon trying to smuggle money out of the bank while playing Monopoly. The night winds down with them playing a three-way matchup of Sequence, although that ends prematurely, too, when Rickon flips the board over and accuses Sansa of  _ cheating _ .

She hasn’t been cheating. If anything, Sansa hasn’t been paying as much attention to the game as she should at all. She’s kind of been staring into Jon’s eyes, flashing him secret smiles that under any other circumstances Arya would have noticed were gross. Competitive Arya doesn’t realize they’re gross, though. Competitive Arya is accusing Sansa and Jon of table talk, of having some kind of secret code with their eyes, and the game ends abruptly before she can put her last piece down and claim a victory for them.

Sansa only cares about beating her siblings because they’re so annoying about winning, though. And tonight, she really hadn’t had time to bother caring about victory at all. She’d rather save her good mojo for tomorrow’s test, or maybe even for this weekend’s road trip instead.

As Robb dutifully cleans up their games, Sansa walks Jon out to say goodbye. He lingers, though; they sit on her porch, talking about places that they can go see this weekend, where they might learn the most for next week. 

“What about King’s Landing? I could see where you go to school,” Jon proposes, but Sansa bursts out into a fit of giggles. 

“Jon, do you even know how far that is? It’s not much better than when we were talking about Highgarden,” she laughs, although the more places they talk about, the more it seems like maybe a daytrip  _ isn’t _ so realistic after all. Winterfell and its surrounding areas are  _ huge _ , and it’ll take hours to get anywhere new.

Suddenly, Sansa gets a little shivery at the idea of maybe spending somewhere  _ overnight _ with Jon. Would her parents even allow it? She’s sure she can find a way to convince them — it is for  _ school,  _ after all.

Jon mistakes her shiver of anticipation for her being cold, and rubs his hands lazily up and down her arms, as if the friction will warm her. It has the opposite effect; Sansa’s pretty sure his touch just accomplishes giving her goosepimples.

Thank the  _ gods _ for Jon’s politeness. He misreads her body’s signals and just takes the bumps he’s causing on her skin as confirmation the the night’s chilly.

“The Riverlands? The Eyrie? Harrenhal? Casterly Rock?” Jon suggests in rapid succession, like he wants to get this sorted so he can get Sansa back inside where she’ll be warm. If only he knew how warm she  _ really _ feels, as he stops trying to rub her arms and just tugs her into his side to share his body warmth instead. 

“Oh! Casterly Rock,” Sansa agrees excitedly, finally feeling like they might have a real, viable option. “My friend Myrcella’s staying there with her uncle Jaime and aunt Brienne; maybe we could go and stay with them? Make sure we can take our time and not miss out on anything.” 

She feels giddy when Jon looks immensely pleased with her suggestion. 

“That works. My great uncle’s still out of town anyway, it would be nice to be somewhere where I’m not so alone all weekend,” Jon says sheepishly.

Which is silly — Robb would have insisted he stay with the Starks. Arya would have insisted he stay there, too. And Sansa’s surprised she  _ hadn’t _ insisted sooner, after she’d caught him sick alone on Monday. She just hadn’t realized, she guessed; or maybe a part of her had felt a little too nervous even then, about seeing Jon around the house now that she’s got this new kind of charged energy when she sees him. 

The nervousness is all excitement now, though, as she wraps him in a tight hug to say goodbye. The second she’s watched him drive off, she scurries back inside, eagerly calling Myrcella before she’s even asked her parents if her roadtrip is okay.

* * *

The roadtrip  _ is _ okay. Myrcella giddily says yes, Cat is excited to see Sansa taking initiative to get out ahead of next week’s lessons, and Ned says there’s no one he’d trust more to take Sansa out of town than Jon. There  _ are _ perks to having grown up around her crazy family after all, it seems. 

Jon’s never been the most expressive person, but she can actually  _ feel _ his enthusiasm when she texts him that they’re good to go. They could even leave as early as tomorrow after class, if they want to — and they  _ do _ . Jon literally asks ‘how soon can we go?’ when she tells him things are all set, and they make a plan to leave straight from Winterfell High.

Maybe Sansa should be using the hour before she goes to bed to  _ review _ her notes for tomorrow’s test… But instead, she goes about packing some of her cutest outfits in an overnight bag, preparing for her and Jon’s upcoming adventure. 

* * *

Barely twelve hours later, Sansa and Jon have both breezed through their tests (or at least, they  _ think _ they have. They’ve at least gotten C’s, Sansa’s confident there’s no way they haven’t passed).

They slide their completed papers onto Mr. Selmy’s desk, high five each other as congratulations on another week of summer school under their belts, and then they’re in Jon’s car, hitting the open road towards the Westerlands. 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Tumblr @starksistersftw.


End file.
